Apparently, the entire Internet did not appreciate the meaning of last week’s conspiracy-related snark. What I was trying to say was that you should not take conspiracy theories at face value because they are often unreliable. So I’m going to do another week, and I would very much appreciate it if the entire Internet would give me its full attention. Surely that is not too much to ask? Please try to keep up, Internet.

A document suggests that FDR knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. A DOCUMENT!?! Of course, it’s something signed by FDR telling his generals to park all of the fighters in the middle of the runway so the Japanese could strafe them. Maybe an order directing the Admirals of his beloved Navy (of which FDR was once Secretary) to stow their ammunition ahead of the anticipated attack. Nope! It’s a story from the daughter of a guy who said that that he talked with FDR about the impending attack. Hearsay twice removed. Technically I guess that’s a document. Oh, there’s also some low-level bickering about decoding methods that doesn’t mention FDR.

Gordon J. Gianninoto wonders if Obama is going to announce Planet X and the ET presence. His planet X is between the earth and the sun, which, uh, would be orbitally impossible to keep hidden because we’d all see it either right before sunrise or after sunset. Unless his Planet X is Venus or Mercury, but really, how much of a bump in the polls could Obama expect from announcing the discovery of Mercury? Come on, people.

When English teachers go bad. Every factual assertion this guy makes about 9/11 is dubious. But I’d like to give Brent Harold a single solid thump to the nose before I’m done with his endorsement of the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth movie: “The brain trust of engineers and academics who question the official version of 911 seems at least as impressive as the large majority of scientists who stand behind climate change science.” OK. I know 90 percent of professional climate scientists are behind the anthropogenic climate change model. How do Gage’s numbers compare? Well, there are 1.5 million engineers in the US. Assuming that all of the “building professionals” who signed Gage’s petition were US engineers (and they are NOT), that would be 1700+ engineers. So, when I’m wildly generous about how many engineers have signed on, about 1/10 of 1% of engineers think that this is a viable hypothesis. This could only be more fringe if I used the actual numbers of engineers who signed. I know English professors are notoriously bad at math, Brent, but this is embarrassing.

Cliff Kincaid says that George Soros (the boogeyman that conservatives use to terrify their children into obedience and from whom I receive my instructions daily) “started the Akin controversy,” as opposed to Akin, who basically said that rape doesn’t cause pregnancies. It’s despicable buck-passing.

The summer has almost ended. In the morning, I teach my first class in Wisconsin. I’m teaching two different syllabi this semester, the first time I’ve done that in a while. I’m teaching 2 sections of “Conspiracy Theory” and a section of “Extraordinary Claims.” The extraordinary claims course will be for more developmental writers, but it is still a seminar class, which is fun.

As you might imagine, I have been rather busy over the last few days, getting things together for the class and so on. Add to that the fact that my smart phone (where I first pick up most of my leads for this feature) committed suicide this week, and you will see that my offerings are somewhat limited. Nevertheless we persevere!

News flash: Joseph Farah is still a creep. This time he calls the Southern Poverty Law Center a hate group. Ah, the “I’m rubber, you’re glue” defense. How…piquant. Of course, he shouldn’t have linked to the article he was talking about, since the SPLC article is far more nuanced that Farah acknowledges and shows that Farah in fact declined an interview. Sue them or shut up, Joe.

Why in the World Are They Spraying is now out. I saw the world premier of “What in the World Are They Spraying” in Atlanta a few years ago, but I’m pretty sure you can watch the sequel without knowing what happened in the first one. I saw the first one and had no idea what was going on.

Rep. Allen West showed a film at the RNC that claims that the so-called “Ground Zero mega-mosque” is part of a plan to impose Sharia on the US.

NO. This is not how you do it, Ruth Manuel-Logan. You don’t get to recite a litany of debunkings of the “CIA created crack” conspiracy theory and end your article with: “What do I say? The U.S. government is pretty proficient at covering up what they don’t want us to know, so the jury is still out as far as I’m concerned.” You’re essentially saying, “I have no evidence. But fuck that.” Try thinking, please. It’s soooo satisfying.

(Unfortunately, it was later reported that Ron Paul was in fact still alive and healthy.)

That’s all for now, people! Now, where do I pick up my big government shill check?

FYI, we have another edition of the Virtual Skeptics coming up this Wednesday at 8:00PM Eastern in our Google+ On Air hangout. As far as stories go, we’ve scooped the most popular skeptic podcast two weeks in a row. We’re going for a three-fer!

I am reliably informed that another week has passed and that it is time for another dumpster dive into the week that was weak. Lots of stuff competed for the top spot on the list this time around. Let’s have at it.

Todd Akin, or as he is known in the House, “The Honorable Mr. Angry Sperm Fighting Secretions Guy,” blamed the liberal media for his plight. The problem is, of course, that the entire Republican party, including some of the insane ones, wanted him to step down.

Oh, what the hell. Let’s just make this the “All Jon Kay, All the Time” edition of the roundup.

“@JosephFarah: County plans no-church zone http://t.co/5deqws64 R we still living in USA?” Ha! this from guy who led Ground 0 mosque freakout — Jonathan Kay (@jonkay)

And that’s all for now. I’m going to go pick deer ticks off myself after my birdwatching romp in the woods this afternoon. Now that I don’t have to wear a “Live Strong” bracelet anymore, perhaps I should consider putting a flea and tick collar around my wrist?

We have mass graves dug all over America for the planned killing of millions of the Middle Class of America. We have had a large number of guillotines that have been shipped to America. Chopping off of heads is the Islamic way of killing off your enemies. We have secret federal concentration camps set up all across America. C.I.A. and other intelligence sources are supposed to help engineer terrible economic conditions in America for October to help stir up the people to mass discontent, rioting in the streets, etc. and this gives Obama the legal excuse to place America under martial law. Foreign soldiers are already arranged to help mass disarm the American people of all their guns. Homeland Security for example has already been notified to prepare for massive uprisings in America in October.

The mocking of conspiracy theories in the American press and Western media is based on the simplistic argument that reason is on the side of the government and officialdom, not on the fringe of society and civilization.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been teaching, packing, hunting for a house, and preparing for my TAM panel. It turns out that when I’m not writing this feature, I do feel as if something is lacking, so I am making a great lunge at normalcy by coming back and writing another Week in Conspiracy. After TAM, a new project is in the works that is going to take this to the next level. More to come. But we are assembling the super-friends to start this sucker up. Needless to say (a phrase that should not exist) when you get a couple hundred skeptics in a bar together, the ideas come fast and furious (another phrase that shouldn’t exist, but for different reasons). I’ve been meticulously gathering the woo as I always have, so there are no gaps in the coverage, just gaps in publication.

STOP THE PRESSES!

Well, it looks sort of unavoidable that I’m going to have to talk about the mass shooting in Colorado. Damn it. But were not 24 hours into the aftermath and I’ve seen the CIA, FBI, MK-Ultra, and Obama targeted as possible culprits. I’m only going to point out a couple of the worst…people in general who have decided to fap furiously to the misery.

Nitwit Cynthia McKinney sent out a link to a copy of an FBI warning that was recently taken down (apparently). It said that Muslim terrorists might be interested in attacking theaters and other places of mass gatherings. Because they were already doing it abroad.

A great reply to chemtrail conspiracy theorists:”This is something you should be looking into,” they all say. However, if that were was true, this newspaper would also be reporting on Smurfs, aliens in the White House and the global domination plans of a group known as the New World Order.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me that there is a sequel to What in the World are they Spraying? I was at the world premiere of the original, and I’m pretty sure this one is going to be ill-informed as well:

That’s all for now, folks! Expect another slight hiatus as I finish up my summer class and move to Wisconsin. I leave in, like, a week and am pretty excited. Got a little house with…gasp!..an office. No more typing in the living room, no siree! I also have a couple of badass projects in the works, as always. But these are super-badass. For real. MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I’ve been sitting around Atlanta for weeks waiting for classes to start. To keep myself occupied, I’ve been combing through the conspiracy literature, reading for my upcoming class on the Cold War, and generally puttering about contentedly. I also watched a disturbing amount of Deadliest Catch (which is “any Deadliest Catch,” by the way).

Currently, I am up in Minnesota, where I failed to find a house for the next semester. I met members of my new department in Eau Claire, WI, which was delightful, and I have a jump on how to think about my upcoming class. So that was productive. I also hit n00b night at the Minnesota Skeptics and met some of the people who live in my electronic friend box. But not all the squeaky cheese in the world would keep me from bringing you up to speed on the weak that was weak! Perhaps delay me for a week or two, but that’s it.

AMERICANS STORM STREETS AGAINST OBAMACARE: Overflow of Republicans Back Up the Sewers. This made the list because of the conflation of the New World Order, which is an imaginary entity, to the ComIntern, which was real but, let’s face it, never really had a chance here after the Depression ended. And even then…

“So if there was weird stuff going on,” he said, “I actually think it was happening back in his college days because I think he has spent $1.5 or $2 million through attorneys to have all of the college records and all of that stuff sealed. So if you’re spending money to seal something, that’s probably where the hanky panky was going on.”

9/11 Truthers freak out when they are compared to alien abductees and Bigfoot hunters by Stephen Colbert. Actually, I saw something similar at TruthCon last year. 9/11 Truthers had been invited to appear alongside UFO disclosure advocates, but the Truthers did not want to appear crazy.

The Feds are planning to raid summer concerts and confiscate Gibson guitars. This is the deal: For the second time in a couple of years Gibson Guitars has been raided by the Feds under suspicion of illegally using protected imported woods. Gibson has spun it as the Obama administration persecuting the company and released a warning that the gummint might confiscate the instruments of touring musicians who bring their guit-fiddles across the border. It was shameful corporate conspiracy mongering, and I will never buy a Gibson new ever again, even though I prefer the sound of a Gibson guitar to my mother’s own voice. Of course, even if the confiscations were true, it would be the fault of Gibson of selling their customers a product made from illegal source wood. In this version of the conspiracy theory, it seems that the Feds are going to…what, start a bigger concert riot than Axl Rose ever dreamed of? Horsefeathers. And you can quote me on that.

Adam Kokesh, Luke Rudkowski, and Mark Dice come out from under their bridges to troll Washington, D.C. Take their excursion to the Federal Reserve, for instance. (Notice how nice the cops are and how even the dogs ignore them.) While they were in D.C., they bothered people in line for the National Archives. They presented people with the declassified “Operation Northwoods” proposal. They didn’t mention that the guy who proposed it lost his job shortly thereafter.

David Icke just got demoted in my book by posting a video about Elie Wiesel conning the world. I think that he is a very smart and talented guy who has gone off the deep end (not his fault), but he has flirted too consistently with racist America militias to be left off the hook entirely.

It’s been a sporadically busy week, moments of frantic activity followed by stretches of soul crushing boredom that would kill weaker bloggers. I should have something coming up at the Swift Blog in the next few days, and Eve and I filmed the first episode of a new online video series for the Independent Investigations Group–Atlanta and Doubtful News called, The Week in Woo, which is a survey of goofy news. The “pilot” is very brief, and I do not expect to be able to keep working on it once we move to Wisconsin, but we’d like to bequeath the show to IIG-Atlanta. Here’s a brief, quick-and-dirty clip that basically shows off our virtual set, made by Mark Distler of Abrupt Media.

But all the digital wizardry in the world can’t stop the never-ending, crushing torrent of conspiracy theory. So let’s have at it:

Not only are conspiracy theorists writing new pledges, but they are authoring 10 New Anti-Truther Commandments, which in no way makes them sound like “nut jobs, cranks, and paranoid schizophrenics.” No way.

“First is the pope’s “Holy Roman” 14th Amendment, cartel-corporate, socialist-fascist, socialist-communist, de facto American Empire, the de jure government of the 14th Amendment American “National” Republic founded in 1868 having been cleverly replaced with a de facto Emergency War Powers government by an executive order of that wicked Masonic president, Commander-in-Chief FDR, on March 6, 1933.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center released a list of the most dangerous wingnuts, and I got to tell you, I’ve followed a lot of these people for years. 4 of them are associated with WorldNetDaily, which is considerate of them, making my research that much easier.

A list of words that are likely to get you snooped on by Homeland Security was recently released. It indicates that the phrase: “A standoff between fundamentalist Pakistani Hazmat teams and ebola-plagued North Korean hostages in Ciudad Juarez has been cancelled because the Tsunami Warning Center received a denial of service attack from Cyber Command,” will bring my website lots of extra hits from the Feds. Hi, guys!